Is there a reasonably concise history of government transparency in Asia, Africa or native America?

The history of transparency in the west is well known. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_government#History
Actually, the Wikipedia article doesn't cover transparency aspects in ancient Greece or the middle ages, but sources for that are easily found as well.
What I haven't yet been able to find are... show more The history of transparency in the west is well known. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_govern...

Actually, the Wikipedia article doesn't cover transparency aspects in ancient Greece or the middle ages, but sources for that are easily found as well.

What I haven't yet been able to find are resources on the history of transparecy in non-Western cultures. The Chinese has Emperors, so probably not a lot of transparency there. My guess is the native Americans were a transparent bunch as a rule, but I don't really know where to start. I was not a history major as an undergrad!

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Best Answer: You are right in your assumptions, but you are comparing apples and oranges. Asia has had many large land empires where the rulers were seen as semi-divine. Like the Persians who fought the Greeks, or even the Russian Tsars, who were influenced by the period of Mongol rule, as well as China. There is no concept of transparency. There are exceptions, but historically monarchies, empires, or oligarchies have dominated Asia, and there was strict distinction between classes or at least between the ruler and the ruled.

Native Americans or Africans or Asians for that matter cannot be generalized simply by the continent they live in. Asia had a few big empires, but also had more localized power in the form of tribes with familial or ancestral connection, and bands of hunter-gatherers, and everything in between. The same is true of Africa and Asia.

Transparency is not an issue when you are a hunter-gatherer living in a group of 40 or 50. Things are transparent because they generally involve everyone. With kingdoms and chiefdoms, there is more stratification between the powerful and not powerful, so there may be less transparency.

The reason transparency isn't talked about in other parts of the world is it isn't a concept in other parts of the world. It has only become an ideal in recent times, and this is among Westernized, democratized nations, I would guess.

However, like I said above, the more egalitarian a society is, or the small and less organized it is, the more transparent it is. With modernization and the rise of free market capitalism, transparency is essential to the economy, and for a democracy, a degree of governmental transparency would be necessary.

Empires and monarchies are basically the same on any continent, and they shun transparency. Native Americans had large empires, like the Incas, and smaller chiefdoms, bands of hunter gatherers, or large tribal confederations. Generally transparency would be the norm for these smaller groups, whereas the big empires had a God-like ruler who was intentionally kept aloof from the common people to remind them that he was not a common person.

In modern day Asia and Africa for example, transparency is not seen nearly to the degree that it is in the West because there are few free-market and democratic states. China has an economy that is increasingly transparent but the government is still shrouded in secrecy. Even Japan where I live is a very stable democracy but the openness of the West as a cultural value is simply not present. A lot of important stuff happens still behind closed doors.